A quick introduction. This blog is about music: its definition, its interpretation, its influence, its forms, and its many subversions and perversions. I myself am a musician; I play saxophone, write electronic music, and I am beginning to branch out into jazz composition and arranging. For many months/years I've had assorted strong opinions about a wide variety of musical topics, and in what might be construed as a New Year's resolution, I am finally creating a venue for myself to write them down. I'm not necessarily promising that each entry will be a well-researched, multifaceted essay on any topic, but at the very least I hope it is thought-provoking, whether you consider yourself a musician or not.

I'm always wondering what is the appropriate balance - if there is one - between a piece of music's theoretical integrity and real-world relevance, two qualities which are often mutually exclusive and even contradictory. On one hand, I laud music that makes internal sense and achieves its artistic goals. But fully half of the human experience of music is its reception - if nobody hears it, what difference does it make if it was written in the first place? It's nice to think of music (or art in general) exists in a vacuum where the Artistic Concept is not just the primary, but the only factor influencing the piece of art. But that's not the way things are, nor were they ever that way. Music has had to compromise its concept to accommodate restraints since its very invention - to get technical, the range of the human voice was probably the first constraint the "singing neanderthals" had to overcome. In early classical times, a wealthy patron was required for a composer to practice his art - and those patrons wanted certain types of music and not others (see: the hundreds of courtly dances Bach wrote). In the modern scene, probably the most significant constraint on music is its marketability, which is often closely correlated with listenability. If nobody wants to listen to it, nobody wants to buy it, therefore nobody wants to pay the musician for it, therefore the musician doesn't continue to write like that (most of the time).

Of course I'm generalizing a lot here, but if you look at ALL music, the majority of music that's being consumed would be rated as 'highly listenable' by its audiences. That's practically by definition. More importantly, though, music which is being consumed is what I would call successfully composed... not only did it please the composer/artist, but it also reached at least one other person who dug it. "Our music breathes when it hits your ears" is a nice quote from one of my favorite artists. The existence of listeners, in my opinion, validates music in a large part.

Am I advocating selling out? First of all, what is selling out? I see it as creating music for the sole purpose of its consumption, like Christina Aguilera writing her songs in tandem with Target execs and recording music videos that literally doubled as Target ads. But what about writing a song which happens to get used as the background for a commercial? Yes, it detracts from its artistic message, but I don't think it destroys it. (In a way, it might increase the potency of a subsequent message by increasing total listenership for that artist.) I mean, look at Bach - he wrote dances because Lord Whoever requested them. And that benefactor, who fancied himself a composer, in one instance wrote a little fugue subject and gave it to Bach to complete. Did Bach sell out? Yeah, kinda, but what of it? You'll notice that earlier when I talked about a piece being "successfully composed" I also said that the completed work should also please the composer. I think the major redeeming quality about those pieces of Bach's is the fact that even in the face of those very non-musical constraints, Bach still managed to write enough intricacy and beauty into those little throwaway pieces that he would've been proud to let them stand amongst his more academic efforts. If an artist is ashamed of his output and yet still allows it to be disseminated, then I think he loses integrity as a musician. But if you truly like the way your song sounds, and then it happens to be the end-credits music to the Jackass movie, whatever. The piece of music is still what you wanted it to be.

When we analyze compositional techniques we talk about imposition of constraints on music - be it the tonal system, or the 12-tone system, or the Song form, or whatever. In my opinion, much of what makes a piece of music impressive and beautiful is how it deals with those constraints - pushing and pulling the boundaries, finding creative ways to solve compositional problems, etc. So I propose we talk about non-musical constraints in just the same way - can't we assign some artistic value to the way a songwriter structures, say, a chorus to make it more catchy? A lot of people I know put down pop music, but I think there's a lot to be said about writing songs with an eye towards maximum emotional impact in minimum time. (Not that that's the only aim of pop, but it certainly is one.)

To be totally honest, a lot of music that is high-concept sounds really bad. To the expert listener, serialist music (roughly, music that's written according to mathematical sequence or formula) is interesting, but to a great majority of people it's formless and pointless cacophony. I regret saying this, but taking into account that music is partially validated by its success as a comprehensible product, serialism fails to connect with listeners and loses value as a real-world musical experience. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it fall? If we're talking about music, I would say no. (It's important to note that there are people who listen to serialist music, and a lot of them, and serialist techniques have had a major impact on all music created since the 20th century. So there.)

I'm not trying to say that music that is more popular is by definition better. Of course not. Uh, the most popular music right now if you are to look at generated revenue is probably Jonas Brothers or Lady Gaga, the likes of whom are interesting from a cultural-phenomenon standpoint but whose music I hear as utter trash. What I do feel is that real-world relevance is indelibly a part of what makes music a piece of art. Musical integrity, of course, is another (perhaps the other) part. So yes, something can be music but not art - on the one hand, by being completely void of substance and created solely for the purposes of dissemination, and on the other, by being so hopelessly esoteric that nobody will recognize it as being a piece of music. That's roughly how I view both corporate-pop sellouts and music-philosophy space cadets who insist that the ambient sound of passing traffic is music. (That actually is a thing that I have heard respected musicians say.)